Lab studies on animals have proven the carcinogenic properties of acrymalide, but McGill's Dr. Ariel Fenster explains that the animals used in the lab tests were exposed to high doses of acrymalide not comparable to typical amounts ingested by humans.

In the journal PLoS Genetics, biologist Siegfried Hekimi demonstrates that worms that have been genetically modified to be less effective at antioxydation -- the elimination of free radicals -- live just as long as regular worms. One of the modified worms actually lived longer than normal.

Jack Horner, the paleontologist whose career inspired the film Jurassic Park, is funding scientists on a quest he hopes will culminate in a fowl whose DNA has been "reverse-engineered" to make the bird more similar to its dinosaur ancestors. The work is carried out by Hans Larsson, a biologist at McGill University in Montreal, and Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina University.

What Darwin Didn't Know, a presentation held at the Redpath Museum in honour of Darwin's bicentennary, was recorded live and archived on the World Wide Web. You can watch the presentation via the archive at: http://bcooltv.mcgill.ca/Viewer/?EventID=200902123549
Moderated by David Green, the Director of the Museum, the speakers included four evolutionary biologists from McGill.

If you imagine a grain of sand and then divide that by a million, you'll have an idea of the size of a nanometer, a measurement of the infinitely small which excites the passions of physicist Guillaume Gervais. In his laboratory at McGill, the researcher opens his door to the cameras of "Québec scientifique".

Paul Wiseman and his research team have developed a radically new technique that uses lasers and non-linear optical effects to detect malaria infection in human blood. The new technique promises simpler, faster and far less labour-intensive detection of the malaria parasite in blood samples.